30 July 2014

The only 11-year-old primary school student Liang Yaoyi from Shenzhen suffered from a brain tumour and shortly before his death, he decided to donate his kidneys and liver. On June 6th, his wish was fulfilled and within eight hours, the organs that he had donated were able to save several lives...

The track was completed recently as part of a major refurbishment of a 100,000
sq ft stadium in Heilongjiang province’s Tonghe County...

But the running track’s designers got their angles badly wrong – painting
90-degree corners onto the track rather than the usual curves...

When senior Communist Party leaders recently announced plans for a last-minute
visit to the stadium, a quick makeover suddenly became necessary. Painting
right angles was faster than painting curves, one official admitted.

“In order to get it ready for the leaders, we painted it like that,” he
confessed. “We think it is ugly too but if the leaders don’t ask us to
change it, what are we supposed to do?”

As the the cries of “I hate all the Arabs” and “Gaza is a cemetery” intensified, some of the protestors tried to accost the participants in one of the country’s biggest anti-war demonstrations this year.

“Go protest in Gaza!” they shouted at the thousands spread all over Tel Aviv’s main protest square, in a demonstration that dwarfed the extremists’ riot.

An article at The Atlantic opines that knowledge per se is not the key factor:

This is a story about what happened when I tried to use big data to help repair my local public schools. I failed. And the reasons why I failed have everything to do with why the American system of standardized testing will never succeed.
A few years ago, I started having trouble helping my son with his first-grade homework. I’m a data-journalism professor at Temple University, and when my son asked me for help on a worksheet one day, I ran into an epistemological dilemma. My own general knowledge (and the Internet) told me there were many possible “correct” answers. However, only one of these answers would get him full credit on the assignment...

In essence, I tried to game the third-grade Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA), the standardized test for my state. Along with a team of professional developers, I designed artificial-intelligence software to crunch the available data. I talked to teachers. I talked to students. I visited schools and sat through School Reform Commission meetings.
After six months of this, I discovered that the test can be gamed. Not by using a beat-the-test strategy, but by a shockingly low-tech strategy: reading the textbook that contains the answers...

This is because standardized tests are not based on general knowledge. As I learned in the course of my investigation, they are based on specific knowledge contained in specific sets of books: the textbooks created by the test makers.

29 July 2014

The drums musicians play have a hierarchy system. Drummers start on a large bass drum called tariparau (sometimes called pahu). This is the only drum that the very few female drummers in Tahiti play. It has two membranes traditionally made out of sharkskin and is struck with a single mallet making the timbre low but only slightly resonate. It provides the basic pulse for the rhythm.
The second drum in the rank is the fa’atete drum. It is a single membrane which can be struck with hands or drum sticks. It is usually made out of coconut tree wood with sharkskin stretched across with intricate carving of flowers, sea turtles, leaves and designs on the bottom. It plays a slightly more complex texture than the tariparau. It has a high tom sound with less resonation.
The last main drum is the most challenging to play. It is called the to’ere and is one of the main sounds associated with Tahiti. It’s a hollowed out log, usually from milo, kamani or kou wood (all trees native to Tahiti). The instrument is anywhere from two to six feet long (usually around three to four), with a slit down the side. It is played with a cone-shaped stick also made out of wood, and depending on where the instrument is struck, the sound will change. Like the tariparau, it also has carvings. The timbre is a hollow sound with higher pitches and moderate resonation.

The style of dance is widely known for the specific hip movements that later led to the hula dance in Hawai'i. They are abrupt hip movements that are enhanced by long grass skirts. The upper body remains more fluid and the head rarely moves.

I was walking
across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to
jump. I ran over and said: "Stop. Don't do it."

"Why shouldn't I?" he asked.

"Well, there's so much to live for!"

"Like what?"

"Are you religious?"

He said, "Yes."

I said, "Me too. Are you Christian or Buddhist?"

"Christian."

"Me too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?"

"Protestant."

"Me too. Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?"

"Baptist."

"Wow. Me too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?"

"Baptist Church of God."

"Me too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?"

"Reformed Baptist Church of God."

"Me too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?"

He said: "Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915."

I said: "Die, heretic scum," and pushed him off.

It's not really a funny joke, but rather one created to emphasize the tragedy of intolerance not between religions, but between sects of the same religion. And it happens in real life:

Taliban terrorists stopped a convoy of minibuses traveling through
western Afghanistan, questioned the passengers, then pulled all the
Shiites into the road and shot them dead...

The
Islamic militants then demanded to know which riders were Shiite.
Fourteen were identified — including three women. The terrorists then
bound their hands and led them off the bus and down the road.

Michael McCafferty, a visiting lecturer at Indiana University who has
spent decades researching Algonquian languages, agrees with the commonly
held notion that the "Moines" in Des Moines is a French derivation of
Moingoana, an Indian tribe that once lived along the banks of the Des
Moines River.

But he insists that rather than denoting the
tribe's true identity, the name was a ribald joke offered up to French
explorers Marquette and Jolliet in 1673 as a bit of razzing between
competing Indian communities...

McCafferty based his conclusion on the work of another linguist, David
Costa, who wrote an article on the etymology of a number of
Miami-Illinois tribal names, Moingoana among them. Moingoana, McCafferty
cites Costa, originates from the word "mooyiinkweena" -which
translates, politely, to "the excrement-faces."

I learned this from a recent podcast of No Such Thing as a Fish (whose website seems to have no such thing as a search box...)

She was born Ruby Stevens on July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the daughter of a bricklayer. When she was 4, Ruby's mother Catherine, pregnant with her sixth child, was pushed from a streetcar by a drunken passenger, which killed her almost immediately. A few months later her father Byron Stevens ran away to Panama digging the Canal, leaving her sister Mildred to support the children as a chorus girl. She took Ruby on the road, whetting her appetite to be a dancer. She went to work at the local telephone company for $14 a week, but she had the urge to somehow enter show business. When not working, she pounded the pavement in search of dancing jobs...

She went on to garner four Academy Award nominations for best actress in a leading role, won several Emmys and a Golden Globe, and had an immense filmography. Image and text from Rob's Webstek.

22 July 2014

The timing varies with latitude and microclimate, but in general, common milkweed reaches its floral maximum in midsummer. It would be a bit of an exaggeration to call the plants "magnificent" or "stately," but they are certainly impressive, rising 4-5 feet high with a thick stem to help support a half-dozen blossoms as big as softballs.

Through the summer months those compound blossoms provide an abundance of nectar and pollen not just for the Monarchs, but for other butterflies and innumerable solitary bees and other insects.

I posted earlier this summer about the complex morphology of the blossoms and how their strategy for pollination makes the blossom occasionally lethal to unwary small insects. That is an uncommon occurrence, and for the most part when one wanders through a patch of mature milkweed, there is an abundance of small insects hovering nearby (and often a resident crab spider lurking in the flower).

The fragrance is strong and reasonably pleasant, but not a prominent feature of the plant. Midsummer will also find the plant hosting a variety of other insects - aphids tended by ants, milkweed beetles and milkweed bugs, lacewings and their eggs, and the milkweed tussock moth. The ecology is complex and worthy of a separate post (next summer).

21 July 2014

When Domenico Fulgione
placed Moorish geckos on dark surfaces, he saw what he had seen for
years. These spiny, hand-sized lizards changed colour. Within an hour,
their typical creamy white complexions transformed into blacker hues
that better matched their environment.

And then Fulgione blindfolded the geckos.

They still changed colour. How does an animal adjust its colour to
match its environment, when it can’t see that environment at all?...

These bizarre results started to make more sense when the team
analysed the gecko’s skin. They found that the skin is rife with
opsins—light-sensitive proteins that are the basis of animal vision.
When light enters your eyes, opsins in your retinas respond by
triggering chemical reactions that send signals to your brain. That’s
how you see. The Moorish gecko has plenty of opsins in its eyes too, but
the team also found these proteins all over the skin of its torso. It’s
especially common in the lizard’s flanks, and in cells called
melanophores that are filled with dark pigments.

The researchers think that the flank opsins can respond to
surrounding light levels and automatically adjust the gecko’s colour. If
they’re right, the lizard has a kind of distributed vision that is
independent of its eyes, and perhaps its brain. In other words, it can
“see” with its skin.

Trout Brook long had been buried in a pipe by the
railroads, which laid tracks atop the streambed to ensure a smooth
descent into the downtown yards.

Now a new
and winding streambed for the brook, which runs through a stormwater
tunnel near Interstate 35, has been carved down the middle of the
42-acre Trout Brook Nature

Sanctuary and Regional Trail, which is slated
for official opening next spring.

It’s called
“daylighting,” the process of unearthing a stream typically filled in
by urban development, and it’s an increasingly popular strategy to
improve water quality and aid neighborhoods in need of natural
amenities...

Daylighting streams is occurring across the country and overseas, in
places such as Hutchinson, Kan.; Yonkers, N.Y.; and Seoul, South Korea.
National Geographic reported last year that more than 70 percent of
streams are paved over in some cities...

In 2012, Kansas governor Sam Brownback signed a massive tax cut into law, arguing that it would boost the state's economy. Eventually, he hoped to eliminate individual income taxes entirely...

Yet though Brownback is running for reelection this fall in a deep red state, he's trailed his Democratic challenger in 3 of the 4 most recent polls — and his marquee tax cut appears to be the main reason. Kansas is now hundreds of millions of dollars short in revenue collection, its job growth has lagged the rest of the nation, and Moody's has cut the state's bond rating...

After the cuts became law, it was undisputed that Kansas's revenue collections would fall. But some supply-side analysts, like economist Arthur Laffer, argued that increased economic growth would deliver more revenue that would help cushion this impact.
Yet it's now clear that the revenue shortfalls are much worse than expected. "State general fund revenue is down over $700 million from last year," Duane Goossen, a former state budget director, told me. "That's a bigger drop than the state had in the whole three years of the recession"...

The declining revenues have necessitated extensive cuts in state education funding, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Moody's cut of the state's bond rating this May was another embarrassment...

Brownback, like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, has blamed President Obama for his state's growing red ink. "This is an undeniable result of President Obama's failed economic policies of increasing taxes and overregulation," Brownback's revenue secretary Nick Jordan said.

In the hours after his death, some of the people close to Washington
discussed reanimating his corpse because they couldn’t stand burying
“the indispensible man.” The person most passionate about this idea was
William Thornton, a close friend of Washington, a physician trained in
European medical schools, and an amateur architect who designed the
United States Capitol.

Thornton arrived in Mt. Vernon the morning after Washington passed
and suggested a unique (for lack of a better word) method of
resuscitating Washington’s body. Twenty years after Washington’s death
Thornton wrote:

I proposed to attempt his restoration,
in the following manner. First to thaw him in cold water, then to lay
him in blankets, & by degrees & by friction to give him warmth,
and to put into activity the minute blood vessels, at the same time to
open a passage to the Lungs by the Trachaea, and to inflate them with
air, to produce an artificial respiration, and to transfuse blood into
him from a lamb.

Though we don’t know if Martha Washington truly considered this a viable option, we do know it was never attempted.

This past week I went for a walk at Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison, Wisconsin. The oldest graves date back to the 1850s-1860s, many of them resting places for native-born Irish, the first settlers in the area.

Most old cemeteries in the eastern half of the United States have sections devoted to casualties of the American Civil War (1861-1865). I was startled to discover this cemetery also has a separate graveyard for Confederate soldiers! They were members of the 1st Alabama Infantry Regiment.

This Confederate cemetery is apparently the northernmost one in the country. The reason for its existence in Wisconsin is explained on the bronze marker above, and at this link and this link.

Addendum: Updated from 2009 to add this video of a local group ("The Whiskey Farm") singing a tribute to the Confederate soldiers (lyrics here. Warning: audio autostarts).

17 July 2014

The U.S. had 4,061 bowling centers in 2012, down 25 percent from 1998,
the earliest year for which the U.S. Census collected consistent data.
But the decline of the bowling alley probably started a lot earlier. The
U.S. added 2,000 bowling alleys between the end of World War II and
1958, when the American Society of Planning Officials reported that “the bowling alley is fast becoming one of the most important—if not the most important—local center of participant sport and recreation.”..

In those days, bowling was a social imperative for many Americans, says
Marcel Fournier, who owned a string of bowling centers in western New
York State starting in the 1960s. “The bowling alley was the blue-collar
country club,” he says, and most of his business came from people
competing in weekly leagues. As the workforce changed and access to
other recreational activities expanded, interest in bowling leagues
waned.

Al Pacino doesn't use the word "sillage" when he comments about the flight attendant: "Well, she’s wearing Floris. That’s an English Cologne..."

I found the term explained in the "Perfume Notes" section of Bois de Jasmin:

Sillage
(pronounced as see-yazh) is a term used to describe a scented trail
left by the fragrance wearer. It comes from the French word for “wake,”
as in the trail left in the sky by an airplane or on the water by a
boat. Sillage defines how fragrance diffuses around the wearer, and a
strong sillage means that a fragrance projects well. Sillage has nothing
to do with the richness of the composition, however, but rather with
the diffusive nature of the materials that go into it. For instance, hedione, fresh floral notes and some types of musk are extremely diffusive and radiant, while retaining an airy, light character.

Fragrances with a strong sillage include such rich compositions like Guerlain L’Heure Bleue, Lancôme Trésor, and Christian Dior Poison as well as light, ethereal blends like Bulgari Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert and Christian Dior Eau Sauvage. Conversely, minimal sillage fragances are ones that stay close to the skin and create a more intimate scented aura.

At dusk Chaffin provided a tour of a colony of night crawlers —
the most damaging of the worms — residing beneath a massive basswood
tree behind his campsite. Each year, the worms can eat a season’s worth
of basswood leaves, depriving the forest floor of “duff,’’ the
carpetlike layer of decaying matter that is a critical component of
northern American forests.

In a healthy forest, the duff keeps tree roots cool, germinates
tree seeds and mushrooms, and provides a home for ovenbirds,
salamanders and other small creatures. But below this basswood the earth
is bare, a circle of hard-packed dirt 30 feet in diameter. Trees that
might fare better here as the climate warms — hardwoods such as red
maple and basswood — can’t take root in the packed dirt. Instead, the
worms create ideal conditions for invasives such as buckthorn and garlic
mustard, plants that evolved with them in Europe.

The Amynthas agrestis, also called the Asian crazy worm, was
discovered last fall in the Arboretum, and the species survived the
harsh winter. Officials said it’s the first time the species has been seen in Wisconsin, although it’s been in the East and Southeast U.S. for 50 years, Herrick said.

The
eight-inchers come with a ravenous appetite and an advanced ability to
reproduce, reaching maturity in just two months and creating offspring
without mating. When infestations happen, the worms devour nutrient-rich
soil at the forest floor. Erosion sets in, making it harder for native
plants to survive. In their place, pesky invasive plants can grow.

The worms are presumed to have arrived in nursery plants received from the east coast.

The best resource I know of online for earthworm-related problems is the Great Lakes Worm Watch, maintained by the University of Minnesota.

The man is one of five children in a religious family bedeviled by an
unusual condition that has flummoxed and fascinated scientists since
the scientific community first discovered them in 2005. The parents were
normal. but five of their progeny are quadrupedal. They walk appendages
down, bottom in the air.

..a new study
published Wednesday in PLOS One, further debunks the notion that the
siblings represent reverse evolution. They do not, as Tan earlier
surmised, walk like primates. Primates walk in a diagonal sequence, in
which they put a hand on one side and a foot on the other, repeating
this pattern as they progress forward. These humans, meanwhile, walk
laterally – similar to other quadrupedals.

Now researchers say the siblings aren’t the product of reverse
evolution. Rather, their walk is a bi-product of a hereditary
condition called Cerebellar hypoplasia, which an MRI originally
revealed. This condition complicates their sense of balance — and to
adapt, they have developed quadrupedalism.

More at the links. For additional information on cerebellar hypoplasia, see these three previous posts:

08 July 2014

According to the contest criteria the submitted images are taken since
the beginning of 2012 and are all created in the "TWAN style"—showing
both the Earth and the sky—by combining elements of the night sky set in
the backdrop of the Earth horizon, often with a notable scenery or
landmark.

Known as "landscape astrophotography" this is similar to
general "Nightscape Photography" but with more attention to the sky,
astronomical perspectives, and celestial phenomena. The contest special
attention to preserving night sky as part of our natural heritage is to
support global efforts in controlling light pollution (International
Dark Sky Association).

"When the University of Victoria in Canada
opened a new campus bike centre in the parkade located under the
University Centre last November, motion-activated doors were installed
to discourage swallows from nesting in the new facility. But when the
swallows returned to their familiar nest sites a few weeks ago, they
were undeterred by this peculiar impediment: they quickly learned how to
open the doors by flying in front of the infrared motion detector, as
you see in this video."

Surrounding the base is a terrazzo floor, inlaid with a star chart,
or celestial map. The chart preserves for future generations the date
on which President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated Hoover Dam, September
30, 1935.

The apparent magnitudes of stars on the chart are shown as they would
appear to the naked eye at a distance of about 190 trillion miles from
earth. In reality, the distance to most of the stars is more than 950
trillion miles.

In this celestial map, the bodies of the solar system are placed so
exactly that those versed in astronomy could calculate the precession
(progressively earlier occurrence) of the Pole Star for approximately
the next 14,000 years. Conversely, future generations could look upon
this monument and determine, if no other means were available, the exact
date on which Hoover Dam was dedicated.

The Nimrud lens or Layard lens is a 3000-year old piece of rock crystal, which was unearthed by Austen Henry Layard at the Assyrian palace of Nimrud, in modern-day Iraq. It may have been used as a magnifying glass, or as a burning-glass to start fires by concentrating sunlight, or it may have been a piece of decorative inlay.
The lens is slightly oval, and was roughly ground, perhaps on a lapidary wheel. It has a focal point about 11 centimetres (4.5 in) from the flat side, and a focal length of about 12 cm. This would make it equivalent to a 3× magnifying glass...

The function of the lens is not clear, with some authors suggesting that it was used as an optical lens and others suggesting a decorative function. Assyrian craftsmen made intricate engravings, and could have used a magnifying lens in their work. The discoverer of the lens noted that he had found very small inscriptions on Assyrian artefacts which he suspected had been achieved with the aid of a lens. Italian scientist Giovanni Pettinato of the University of Rome has proposed that the lens was used by the ancient Assyrians as part of a telescope, and that this explains their knowledge of astronomy. Experts on Assyrian archaeology are unconvinced, doubting that the optical quality of the lens is sufficient to be of much use.

07 July 2014

Hundreds of feet below a Russian city is an abandoned salt mine which might as well be the inside of a rave.
The walls are covered with psychedelic patterns, caused by the natural layers of mineral carnallite creating swirls throughout the coloured rock.
Carnallite is used in the process of plant fertilisation, and is most often yellow to white or reddish, but can sometimes be blue or even completely colourless.

Carnallite is an evaporite mineral, a hydrated potassium magnesium chloride with formula KMgCl3·6(H2O). It is variably colored yellow to white, reddish, and sometimes colorless or blue. It is usually massive to fibrous with rare pseudohexagonal orthorhombic crystals. The mineral is deliquescent (absorbs moisture from the surrounding air) and specimens must be stored in an airtight container... only forms under specific environmental conditions in an evaporating sea or sedimentary basin. It is mined for both potassium and magnesium...

Photographer Jo Farrell has been documenting the current lives of the last remaining survivors of that ancient practice. She notes that there are modern parallels:

“In every culture there are forms of body modification
that adhere to that cultures’ perception of beauty. From Botox, FGM,
breast augmentation, scarring and tattooing, to rib removals, toe tucks
and labrets.”

"Shawshank" for years has been rated by users of imdb.com as the best
movie of all time (the first two "Godfather" films are second and
third)...

"Shawshank" was becoming that priceless entertainment property—a
repeater. Viewers watched it again and again. Those who initially may
have been turned off by the idea of a prison drama born out of a
wrongful conviction were drawn in by likable characters who inhabit a
world where the true horrors of prison are left largely to the
imagination. The
movie's wholly satisfying conclusion—a universal
fantasy—gives people hope...

In Mansfield in north-central Ohio, tourism officials five years ago
established a tour to capitalize on what had become the area's biggest
draw. The prison, courthouse and oak tree where Andy leaves money for
Red are among 14 stops on the Shawshank Trail, which one weekend last
summer drew about 6,000 people...

"Shawshank" has aired on 15 basic cable networks since 1997, including
six in the most recent season, according to Warner Bros. Last year, it
filled 151 hours of airtime on basic cable, tied with "Scarface" and
behind only "Mrs. Doubtfire"...

"Gorged, yet strangely empty, Starfinder sinks into a fitful sleep. During it, he dreams an atavistic dream that he has dreamed increasingly often of late. In the dream he is a Cro-Magnon savage walking weaponless across a starlit plain. Just ahead of him and to his right is a small shadow-filled copse... As he comes abreast of the copse a huge saber-toothed tiger leaps out of the shadows and bears him to the ground. It crouches above him, its massive forelegs resting on his chest, shutting off his breath, its horrible tusked face grinning down into his own...

Starfinder knows that in a moment he will be dead, and yet he canot move. This, far more than the tiger, constitutes the nightmarish quality of the dream. This numbing paralysis that grips him, that makes it impossible for him even to try to save himself. His arms lie like lead at his sides. He cannot so much as lift a single finger. All he can do is lie there helplessly and wait for those gaping jaws to complete their relentless journey, and close.

He wills his arms to rise; he wills his fingers to sink into the tiger's tawny throat. But his arms do not stir; his fingers do not even tremble... He wakes sweating.

From Starscape with Frieze of Dreams, by Robert F. Young (published in Orbit 8, 1970).

A clinically accurate description, incorporating not only the paralysis, but also the dyspnea and the autonomic response.

05 July 2014

I'm going to end my blogging day with this absolutely delightful advertisement for a Peruvian hardware store. The explanation for what is happening comes at the very end...A hat tip to reader John Farrier, who posted this at Neatorama.

Yesterday I was fortunate to observe a phenomenon that I have never witnessed before, though I had read about it years ago.

As I left the house on an errand, I saw a small butterfly frantically quivering its wings, but unable to escape from a milkweed blossom. I've seen this before when butterflies have their legs entangled in spiderwebs; at a milkweed blossom it could also have encountered a lurking crab spider.

In this particular situation the debate as to whether to "let nature take its course" was irrelevant, and I paused only a few milliseconds before walking over to free the innocuous butterfly from the wicked spider. Much to my surprise (and intellectual delight), I discovered that the butterfly was entrapped not by a spider or a web, but by the blossom itself..

Milkweed is not a carnivorous plant, but its pollination system can be lethal to small

insects. Unlike most other flowering plants, milkweed pollen is not free as a powder, but is stored in rather large sacs. The legs of visiting insects can become entrapped in the structure of these plants; when the insect leaves, it pulls away the entire sac, which then can be transported to the pistils of the next blossom.

An encounter with a pollinarium is not a problem for large insects like Monarch butterflies, bumblebees, or even robust solitary bees. But the butterfly I saw was one of the small "hairstreaks" which are only the size of one's fingernail (see the embed at right of a different hairstreak). It lacked the propulsive force necessary to pull the pollinarium away from the blossom, and would have perished there from exhaustion or fallen victim to a roving predator.

I removed from the large milkweed blossom the individual flower holding the hairstreak; it was still unable to escape until I grasped its wings with my other hand and pulled; it then flew away.

The video at the top has excellent visuals of this phenomenon. A detailed text description with illustrative photos was posted at Eye On Nature in 2012.

Freshly released but heavily censored FBI documents include
tantalizing new information about events connected to the Sarasota
Saudis who moved suddenly out of their home about two weeks before the
9/11 terrorist attacks, leaving behind clothing, jewelry and cars.

The documents were released to BrowardBulldog.org Monday amid ongoing Freedom of Information Act litigation...

Deputies were called after a man with a Tunisian passport was
observed disposing of items in a dumpster behind a storage facility he
had rented in Bradenton.

The man’s name is blanked out, but the
report says authorities who searched the dumpster found “a self-printed
manual on terrorism and Jihad, a map of the inside of an unnamed
airport, a rudimentary last will and testament, a weight to fuel ratio
calculation for a Cessna 172 aircraft, flight training information from
the Flight Training Center in Venice [Fla.] and printed maps of Publix
shopping centers in Tampa Bay.”

The Flight Training Center is
where 9/11 hijack pilot Ziad Jarrah, who was at the controls of United
Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed in Shanksville, Pa, took flying
lessons.

The three paragraphs that follow are completely blanked
out. The reasons cited include information “specifically authorized
under criteria established by [presidential] executive order to be kept
secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy.”

In all, the FBI released 11 pages Monday. They contain statements
reiterating that the al-Hijjis had departed the United States in haste
shortly before 9/11 and that “further investigation” had “revealed many
connections” between them and persons associated with “attacks on
9/11/2001.”

Those statements flatly contradict the FBI’s public
statements that agents found no connection between the al-Hijjis and the
9/11 plot.

Yet they dovetail with the account of a
counterintelligence source who has said investigators in 2001 found
evidence — phone records and photographs of license plates snapped at
the entrance to the al-Hijjis’ Sarasota-area neighborhood — that showed
Mohamed Atta, other hijackers and former Broward resident and current
al-Qaeda fugitive Adnan Shukrijumah had visited the al-Hijji home.

None
of that information, or even the fact that an investigation in Sarasota
took place, was disclosed by the FBI to Congress’ Joint Inquiry into
the attacks or to the 9/11 Commission, according to former Florida U.S.
Sen. Bob Graham. Graham co-chaired the joint inquiry...

Among other things, the government asserted that classification is
necessary because the censored information pertains to foreign relations
or foreign activities, including confidential sources.

“This
could be about information considered embarrassing to Saudi Arabia,”
said Julin. Fifteen of the 19 suicide hijackers were Saudi nationals.

It's important to emphasize that this new evidence does not "prove" any conspiracy theory (MIHOP, LIHOP, or other). It does confirm that there exists information not made public by previous investigations. Via Reddit.

This is a tribute to the wink of complicity from the filmmakers to the
audience when they make actors look straight into the camera. It is not a
tribute to scenes where the fourth wall is broken (when a character
addresses the audience directly), some clips in the video belong to that
category but most of them don't cause it is not what we wanted to show.

There
are﻿ 150 different clips (from 148 films) in this video, but at first
we had selected more than 200 films. We left out dozens of scenes on
purpose, cause we didn't want a 15 minutes montage. For example, we
decided not to include the "found footage" genre, cause everyone looks
at the camera in this type of movies (like "Cloverfield"). And also
musical numbers, where it's very common that the actors look at the
camera while singing.

A list of the films with time tags is at the YouTube "about", but it's easier to just click on the "cc" (closed caption) button to reveal them during the video.

All those quarters I wasted in Pac Man, never knowing that there is a square where you can "hide" from the ghosts:

The right side of the T-section beneath the ghost regenerator can be used as a safe spot where the ghosts are unable to find and catch Pac-Man. There are two conditions that must be met to make the safe spot
work for Pac-Man. The first is that none of the ghosts must "see"
Pac-Man enter the safe spot. If they do, they will follow him in there,
and the said spot will not be safe. The other condition is that Pac-Man
must be facing north. You don't necessarily need to approach the spot
from the south (just to the right of where Pac-Man begins the round).
You can enter from the east and quickly change orientation to point
north. If you meet both conditions, you can leave Pac-Man in that
location for as long as you like and move the joystick when you are
ready to resume play. Marathon players of the game often use this trick
if they need a break from the game.

04 July 2014

This Fourth of July, Americans will celebrate the adoption of the
Declaration of Independence with picnics, parades and, of course,
fireworks. It's a tradition that's been in place for more than 200
years — and for more than 200 years, it's been kind of wrong.

"It
is the right day to celebrate the Declaration of Independence," author
and historian Ray Raphael tells NPR's Guy Raz. "It is not the right day to celebrate the signing
of the declaration or the right day to celebrate independence. The
vote for independence was on July 2 — two days before — and the first
signing of the declaration ... was not until August 2 — a month later."..

In his book Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past,
Raphael explores the truth behind the stories of the making of our
nation — like how America ended up lighting fireworks on the 4th and not
the 2nd.

"Adams wrote a letter to his wife, Abigail, on the 3rd of July, the
day after they voted for independence, saying the 2nd of July will
always be remembered and will be celebrated with parades and
illuminations and patriotic speeches," Raphael says. "He described the
Fourth of July to the tee, but he called it the 2nd."

America
ended up with the 4th because that's the day the Declaration of
Independence was sent out to the states to be read. The document was
dated July 4, so that's the day they celebrated.

03 July 2014

Most countries now accept the premise on which Portugal's territorial waters are also based:

A belt of coastal waters extending 12 nautical miles (22.2 km or 13.8 mi) from the low-water mark of the coast, unless it overlaps with another country's 12-mile zone, in which case the border between both territorial waters is the median line between both low-water marks (unless both countries agree otherwise).

But this map doesn't care for mere territorial waters. As can be judged from the scale on right of the map (on the Moroccan mainland), the grey zones are too extended to be only 12 nautical miles. They constitute Portugal's Exclusive Economic Zone.
For the 1982 Convention also specified that a country could claim an EEZ of 200 nautical miles (370.4 km or 230.2 mi) beyond its coastal baseline. An EEZ allows a country to claim exclusive rights, but fewer than in its territorial waters...

A few strategically placed islands can provide a gigantic (and potentially very lucrative) EEZ. Which partly explains why Argentina is so keen on Britain's Falkland Islands, or why China and Japan are arguing about a few otherwise insignificant rocks in the East China Sea.

Portugal's archipelagos provide it with three gigantic EEZs, almost contiguously stretching from 200 nautical miles west of Monchique Islet (the westernmost bit of Azorean dry land, geologically already on the North American Plate), all the way back to Lisbon.

Portugal claims that their maritime territory is 40X their terrestrial one.

Exact rates of Indonesian deforestation have varied with different
figures quoted by researchers and government, but a new study, which
claims to be the most comprehensive yet, suggests that nearly twice as
much primary forest is being cut down as in Brazil, the historical
global leader...

In 2012, she calculates, Indonesia lost 840,000 hectares of its primary
forest, compared to 460,000 hectares in Brazil, despite its forest being
roughly a quarter the size of the Amazon. This, says Margano, was the
most lost by any country...

But the figures are potentially embarrassing because they suggest that a
2011 moratorium on granting new licenses for clearing or logging of
primary forests and carbon-rich peatlands could have been a driver for
deforestation.

Margono and co-author Matthew Hansen said the new
data from remote sensing showed that the extra losses came largely from
the felling of primary forest in wetlands and in government-protected
areas.

Heavy duty forestry mulchers can clear up to fifteen acres of vegetation a day depending on terrain, density, and type of material. Forestry mulchers are often used for land clearing, right-of-way, pipeline/power line, and wildfire prevention and management, vegetation management, invasive species control, and wildlife restoration...

Forestry mulchers and forestry mowers are often used for removing underbrush and invasive species, such as buckthorn and multiflora rose, in order to allow the rejuvenation of grasses and other food sources... Invasive insects such as pine beetles
can also devastate forests, leaving behind rotting trees with
diminishing timber value and that may become falling hazards if they
lose their ability to stand up against wind...

Most people by now have heard of fecal transplants, but a BBC article provides some additional detail:

A classic study of nine healthy British volunteers found that bacteria
accounted for more than half of the mass of their faecal solids... Scientists have linked disruptions to this organ, a condition known as
dysbiosis, to everything from inflammatory bowel disease and high blood
pressure to diabetes and obesity.

Viewed in this light, a faecal microbiota transplant is nothing more
than an attempt to reseed an intestinal tract, often after antibiotics
have killed off the native flora that might have kept invasive species
at bay. No other medical therapy can claim such a high cure rate for the
infection widely known as C. diff...

After the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, performed its first faecal
microbiota transplant in 2011, a patient who had been bed-ridden for
weeks left the hospital 24 hours later. And in 2013, researchers in the
Netherlands halted a landmark C. diff. clinical trial early for
ethical reasons when they saw that the overall cure rate of 94% with
donor faeces had far outpaced the 31% cured with the antibiotic
vancomycin. ..

The first known record of faecal transplants dates back to
fourth-century China, when a doctor named Ge Hong included several
mentions in his ambitious collection of therapeutic formulas called
Handy Therapy for Emergencies. Ge dutifully described how to treat
patients with food poisoning or severe diarrhoea by feeding them a
faecal suspension bluntly named “solution of stool”...

Canadian veterinarian and epidemiologist David Waltner-Toews suggests in
his own book, The Origin of Feces, that our response to poo may instead
reflect a complicated and contradictory cultural history based more on
geography. Whereas faeces was traditionally associated with fertiliser
in rural agricultural areas, he says, it took on a more sinister role in
urban centres as public health officials emphasised the very real
danger of diarrhoeal diseases. ..

Scientists have already raised the idea that a rise in allergies and
autoimmunity in industrialised nations may derive from a kind of
collective defect of reduced microbial diversity.

“We cannot find
people who’ve never been on antibiotics,” Khoruts says of his donors.
For complex autoimmune diseases such as ulcerative colitis, faecal
transplants may offer only a partial solution. And with some data
suggesting that susceptibility may be linked in part to past antibiotic
exposure, perhaps no Western donor can provide the microbes needed to
fully reseed the gut.

Currently on show at Domaine de Boisbuchet, in Charente, France, the
historically significant exhibition centers on the scavenger-style
patchwork technique known as Boro and features some 50 pieces of
kimonos, futon covers, work garments and other textiles handmade between
1850 and 1950 by Japanese peasants...

It wasn't until well into the 20th century that cotton became widely
available in most of Japan. And while availability grew, it remained too
expensive for most poor rural workers, ultimately leading to the
widespread use of patchwork manufacturing and the tradition of passing
repeatedly mended garments down from generation to generation...

The principal of "wabi-sabi" can be seen in the perfection of
imperfection, "shibui" in the textiles' humble nature and "mottainai" as
a reflection of a societal effort to avoid waste.

Additional text and images at the link, with a hat tip to reader Brad, who noticed the conceptual and artistic similarity to the kintsugi that I blogged earlier.

I have been listening to podcasts of QI's "No Such Thing as a Fish," each of which is introduced with the statements "No, seriously. It's in The Oxford Dictionary* of Underwater Life. It says it right there in the first paragraph: there's no such thing as a fish."

I wondered about the logic of the statement, which maddeningly was never discussed in any of the podcasts I had heard. Finally a web search led me to the QI episode above, during which Stephen Fry quotes the eminent Stephen Jay Gould's assertion that there is no such thing as a fish. (q.v. for explanation) (addendum: or read Sylvia's notes in the Comment section).

While I'm on the subject of podcasts, I can also recommend QI's series of "International Factballs" produced to coincide with the World Cup. Lots of tidbits of "things you wouldn't know" in those broadcasts.

*There is actually no book with that title. Oxford does, however, publish an encyclopedia of underwater life (see the comment thread below).

01 July 2014

For my second post in the series on milkweed, I'll address the perception of milkweed as a weed. The photo above shows a mature patch of common milkweed at the edge of our front lawn next to the driveway; circled in the center of the lawn is a group of four plants that have "escaped" from their assigned seats.

When I helped staff our butterfly group's booth at Madison's Garden Expo this past spring, it was apparent that "wildflower gardeners" were receptive to our encouragement to plant milkweed, but that "perfectly-manicured-English-knot-garden" gardeners were appalled that we would encourage propagation of "weeds."

"Weed" is inherent in the plant's common name, and thus is an unavoidable influence on the plant's perception by the public. Most gardeners accept the principle that a weed is a "plant out of place," but there are some for whom the weediness is a true problem - especially farmers:

Milkweed has evolved two techniques to propagate itself. The best-known are the autumn seed pods which burst open to release "parachute-equipped" seeds for wide dispersal (more about that later this year). But when milkweed finds a microenvironment with suitable sunlight and water, it will also propagate itself with underground lateral roots.

The four plants in the center of our yard are upgrowths from an underground root sent out from the larger patch; they are smaller because they have been mowed down each time the grass is mowed. I've left them there because the fresh shoots have leaves that are way more tender than the more waxy leaves on the mature plants, and thus they provide good food for young caterpillars.

If you want to get rid of them for esthetic reasons, simply reach down, grasp the stem firmly, and pull:

The several inches of white stem represents the extension below ground to the horizontal feeder. You can also use any common commercially-available broad-leaf herbicide, but we prefer not to employ such agents close to our flower and herb beds.

The non-uniform greenness of the lawn could reflect a misjudgment on my part of the "throw" of the fertilizer spreader, or it could be an artistic statement. If a neighbor asks, I'll just say it's the new "thing" and that if their lawn isn't striped, they must be hopelessly retro.

When I was a child of seven years old, my friends, on a holiday,
filled my pocket with coppers. I went directly to a shop where they sold
toys for children; and being charmed with the sound of a whistle,
that I met by the way in the hands of another boy, I voluntarily
offered and gave all my money for one. I then came home, and went
whistling all over the house, much pleased with my whistle, but
disturbing all the family. My brothers, and sisters, and cousins,
understanding the bargain I had made, told me I had given four times as
much for it as it was worth; put me in mind what good things I might
have bought with the rest of the money; and laughed at me so much for my
folly, that I cried with vexation; and the reflection gave me more
chagrin than the whistle gave me pleasure.

This, however, was afterwards of use to me, the impression continuing
on my mind; so that often, when I was tempted to buy some unnecessary
thing, I said to myself, Don’t give too much for the whistle; and I saved my money.

As I grew up, came into the world, and observed the actions of men, I thought I met with many, very many, who gave too much for the whistle...

When I saw another fond of popularity, constantly employing himself
in political bustles, neglecting his own affairs, and ruining them by
that neglect, He pays, indeed, said I, too much for his whistle.

If I knew a miser, who gave up every kind of comfortable living, all
the pleasure of doing good to others, all the esteem of his
fellow-citizens, and the joys of benevolent friendship, for the sake of
accumulating wealth, Poor man, said I, you pay too much for your whistle...

Some pundits
have argued that the rising popularity of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth
Warren and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is proof that, even
without a left-wing Tea Party, demographic changes are pushing the
Democratic Party inexorably leftward. There’s no doubt at least a kernel
of truth to this. But it’s important to keep in mind that there’s
nothing new about unapologetically liberal politicians coming out of the
Big Apple and the Bay State... Above all else,
focusing on high-profile pols misses what makes the Tea Party so
powerful: its ability to rally American conservatism’s activist troops...

Like almost 60,000 others this year, Brahana decided to brave the
Mediterranean sea in order to reach Italy, and therefore Europe. She
paid people-smugglers $1,600 (£950), she says, to board a boat packed
with more than 300 people. “It’s really hard with a small baby,” she
says stoically of a journey that has proved deadly for thousands over
the past 20 years. Her boat was intercepted by an Italian navy ship last
week and all its passengers taken to safety. The question for them now
is what comes next.

Take 1lb. Valentia almonds; blanch and beat them very fine, with a
little rose water; mix in the yolks of six eggs; whisk up the whites of
four eggs very stiff; mix all together, with half a pint of cream, and
sweeten it with beat sugar to your taste; set the whole in a stew pan on
a clear fire, and stir it till it is thick enough to model into the
shape of a hedge hog; put a small currant for each eye, and stick it all
over with cut almonds for the bristles of the hedge hog; then set it on
a dish, and pour over it a rich custard.

This kind of novelty cake stretches back much further than I
realised. I knew about the spectacular sugar sculptures and ices that
would have featured in Grand Desserts, the final course of upper class
formal dinners in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but when I
started browsing through our holdings of confectionery manuals I wasn’t
prepared for the quirkiness of some of the dishes, combining dazzlingly
difficult techniques with witty concepts.

The earliest book on confectionery in our rare book collections is the first edition of Mrs Mary Eales’s Receipts, printed in 1718.

More at the link, which I found in a newly-discovered blog: Echoes from the Vault - "
a blog from the Special Collections of the University of St Andrews." There must be an abundance of fascinating material there.

The E-Fan, engineered by Airbus Group, is propelled by two 30-kilowatt
electric motors, themselves powered by a series of lithium-ion batteries
fitted into the plane’s wings (a 6 kW electric motor in the main wheel
gives it some extra thrust on the ground). ”It’s a very different way
of flying,” said Jean Botti, chief technical and innovation officer at
Airbus Group, told ClimateWire, “absolutely no noise, no emissions.”..

Right now, the E-Fan can only remain in the air for an hour, which means
that range anxiety — which accompanies electric vehicles of all sorts —
is bound to be a concern... To that effect, the E-Fan is equipped
with a backup battery and a parachute.

Airbus Group’s ultimate goal is to make a 70- to 80-person
hybrid-electric commuter jet with three hours of range in the 2050 time
frame... These advances are steppingstones toward realizing Flight Path 2050, the
European Union’s aggressive goal to reduce the aviation sector’s
nitrous oxide emissions by 90 percent, noise pollution by 65 percent and
carbon dioxide emissions by 75 percent by 2050.

More information at the link, where there is a video of the manufacturing and first flight of the aircraft.

Four teenage girls have received vaginas grown from their own cells in a lab. And they work.

These
girls were born with underdeveloped or missing vaginas because of a
rare condition called Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser Syndrome that
affects about 1 in 5,000 women. While their labia looked like those of
other girls, their vaginas, cervixes and wombs, which are necessary for
menstruation and childbirth, never fully formed.

Medical
researchers took a vaginal tissue sample from each patient, who were
between 13 and 18 at the time, and used them to grow cells in the lab.
After four weeks, the researchers had enough cells to layer them on to
degradable scaffolding...

Six months later, the patients were able to menstruate and have
sexual intercourse for the first time. “After the operation they were
able to function normally,” Atala told reporters. “They had normal levels of desire, arousal, satisfaction and orgasm.” Some may also be able to have children.

"Tai-wiki-widbee" is an eclectic mix of trivialities, ephemera, curiosities, and exotica with a smattering of current events, social commentary, science, history, English language and literature, videos, and humor. We try to be the cyberequivalent of a Victorian cabinet of curiosities.

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I'm using an old photo of my grandfather as an avatar; he would have been amused.
Old friends, classmates, students, former colleagues, or distant relatives are welcome to email me via retag4726 (at) mypacks.net